The need for more effective and versatile computing environments continually grows as technology evolves and as users' demands increase. Today, more and more users have computing environments with multiple processors, and sometimes even with multiple displays as well. These users may want to utilize the shared resources of their computing environments in an easy fashion, such that their needs are met with ease and comfort.
Most processors and displays today support input devices, such as a keyboard and mouse. These input devices send input signals to the processor, and the processor's response to the input signals is displayed on the display. Many of these processors and displays, however, support only a local input device connection, such that the input device only has the capability to control the processor and display to which it is directly connected. This limitation undercuts the goal of optimizing efficiency and effectiveness of a multi-processor or multi-display distributed computing system. Users often do not want to connect input devices to each processor in their system due to cost and space considerations.
Some existing systems allow users to use a single input device and a single processor with different displays. In these systems, the single input device is connected to the single processor, and the single processor is connected to multiple displays. There are other existing systems that allow users to use a single input device with different processors, but these systems require either a hardware switch (e.g. a keyboard-video-mouse, or KVM, switch) or a key depression (for example, on a keyboard) for input to be manually switched from one processor to the next.
For these and other reasons, there is a need for embodiments of the present invention.